When God Doesn’t Answer Our Prayers (Rooted ‘26)
Question - How can I trust God when He doesn’t answer my prayers?
By Brittany Martin
I have been a Christian a long time, and there have been a LOT of prayers in my life that God answered and ones that He did not answer—both in the past and more recently.
Here are just a few of my unanswered prayers:
I recently went to several ENTs for hearing loss and prayed it would be something simple and reversible, like needing tubes or a medication or some other easy fix. It wasn’t. And now, at 35 years old, I have to wear hearing aids.
When my husband and I were house shopping years ago, we made multiple offers, prayed over each one, and every single one fell through.
Between my first and second sons, I had an early miscarriage. I prayed and prayed to keep that baby, and I didn’t.
When my oldest who is now eight, was 6 weeks old, he was diagnosed with metopic craniosynostosis. Craniosynostosis is the premature fusing of the skull plates, and metopic refers to the location on his forehead. I was told he needed cranial surgery at 10 weeks old. And for those four weeks leading up to surgery, I prayed for healing, sobbed, and prayed some more—but Ezra still had to have surgery.
A few years ago, I tried to start a group for moms of special needs kids. I prayed it would connect me with women who understood what I was walking through, but it flopped. There were so many events where it ended up just being me and my family. And it hurt.
I’m not sharing all of this to make anyone feel sorry for me. What I want you to see is that even with all of these unanswered prayers, I still believe God is good. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
And I think that’s where faith really gets real. Not when prayers are answered the way I hoped—but when they’re not, and I still choose to believe He’s good. And something I’ve also learned is that sometimes I the prayer I view as “unanswered” IS ANSWERED – just not in the timing or the way I expected. Sometimes it looks like a ‘no’ in the moment, but later I can look back and see it was a ‘not yet’ or even a completely different ‘yes’ than I was asking for but it’s so much better. I’ve learned to separate unanswered prayers from unanswered love.
If we look back at those supposed unanswered prayers of mine, you can see God’s goodness all over my life.
Yes, I have to wear hearing aids now, and I’m not going to lie—it sucks. But God has used it to remind me that my identity isn’t in my physical body, but in the One who made it. Hearing aids don’t make me less than. It’s also helped my kids see that disabilities—big or small—don’t define a person. I’m still Mommy.
With our house, we missed out on several places first. We spent over a year and a ton of gas driving back and forth, making offers, and praying over each one only to be disappointed. Then we finally found a house that just felt right—I remember getting chills, and both my husband and I tearing up during the showing. Not only did we get that house, but God also provided a buyer for our home who paid well over asking price and waived inspection. That not only got us into our new home, but answered other prayers we had been praying—like being able to pay cash for a new van and avoid PMI completely on our new home. Had we gotten one of those other homes we wouldn’t have had any of that happen and the house wouldn’t be nearly as perfect as our current one.
My miscarriage was really hard. Having to tell people, “I’m not pregnant anymore,” over and over was painful in a way I didn’t expect. I still believe I’ll meet that baby in Heaven one day, the one my boys named Eden. In that season, I kept choosing to trust that God’s ways were higher—that He saw not just what I wanted, but what I needed. And what I didn’t know then was that just two weeks later, to my doctors’ amazement and confusion, I found out I was pregnant again—with my son Levi.
Walking through my oldest’s surgery and recovery was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. It was a prayer for healing that didn’t get answered the way I begged for, and it led to even more hard things we had to walk through. But God still showed up. He provided unprompted freelance design work so we never had to touch savings for over $20,000 in medical bills. He brought people and a food pantry that fed us when money was the tightest and enabled us to lose a significant amount of weight and get healthy. I learned how to advocate for my child and stand on my own two feet—skills I didn’t know I’d need later when new diagnoses came. And it strengthened both my faith and my marriage. I could honestly go on and on about how that unanswered prayer for healing was a blessing to me. And God DID heal him. Using the surgery, doctors and orthopedic department at St. Louis Children’s Hospital my son is now a happy healthy eight year old.
And then there was the group for moms of special needs kids that didn’t take off. I was heartbroken when it flopped, and I stepped back from it when I got pregnant with my last child. I believed the lie that maybe no one wanted to be my friend, or that I was too much, or that no one understood me or my situation. But sitting here now, we know that wasn’t the end of the story. Sometimes silence isn’t a “no”—it’s just a “not yet.” Because a year later, a mom named Taylor walked into Harvester carrying the same dream. And together with God, we didn’t just build a group—we built something neither of us could have done alone. A community. A village. A kindred.